Xenosaga Episode II: Hands-On

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Videos, screens and in-depth battle impressions from the demo.

By Anoop Gantayat

Xenosaga Freaks arrived to Japan earlier today, and with it a playable demo of Xenosaga Episode II. This is the first playable demo, actually, as Namco and Monolith have shown Episode II through hands-off trailers until now. We'll examine the contents of the Freaks disk a bit later, but our first priority was to get as much out of the demo and deliver it to you.

The included demo is short, but as sweet as we were expecting it to be. You start off controlling an E.S. Asher mech, working your way through a debris-filled city. The mech is piloted by Chaos and Canaan. Following a series of mech versus mech battles, you come under attack and, having been disabled, are rescued by Jin, who shows his unmanly strength by taking out an enemy mech ten times his size with his sword alone. The demo switches to foot at that point, allowing you to play as Jin, Ziggy and Chaos, with Shion waiting in reserve. A series of character battles cumulates in a dramatic confrontation that ends the demo about 20 minutes after it starts.

When moving around, controls remain the same regardless of being in control of a mech or a person. You can destroy debris to reveal new paths and treasure with a tap of the square button (and don't get the idea that being on foot instead of in a mech entails less destructive capability -- that's certainly not the case). While on foot, if you switch lead characters in your party, the new leader appears on-screen. We switched to Shion the moment we figured out that she was included in the game (on our second time through).

Enemies, both mech and human, are placed around the overworld map, visible before hand. We found it pretty much impossible to avoid them, even when striking traps that stun enemies in place momentarily, but thankfully there aren't too many battles in the first place, and Xenosaga actually has an enjoyable battle system. See the section "TOO MUCH BATTLE INFORMATION" on the next page for the full word on the Xenosaga Episode II battle system as presented in the demo's lengthy tutorial section.

Of course, lengthy cinema sequences feature prominently in the demo. There's a ten minute sequence mid-way through as your E.S. Asher falls under attack. The high point of this sequence is a terrific shootout as Canaan and Chaos team up with Jin to blast away at their surrounding enemies.

Monolith has clearly lost nothing when it comes to presentation in the switch from part 1 to part 2 of the series. Judging by the demo alone, Xenosaga II has all the visual impact of a finely directed movie. Improvements to graphics, including thick explosion and clean shading and lighting effects make this a visual treat for RPG fans. The character models, now done with a more realistic design approach, the surrounding neon city environments and the rain effects elevate this to the top tier of RPG visuals on any system.

And now, you can see it all here! We grabbed footage from the demo as we played and have created a generous collection of high res (and regular res) movies. Included are battle sequences, walking sequences, cinema scenes and two trailers, one of them brand new and very impressive. Make the downloads on the media page for this story.

And when you're done viewing the videos, turn the page for an in-depth look at the Xenosaga Episode II battle system.